Educational Advocacy Committee

The Educational Advocacy Committee (EAC) is associated with the North Central Regional Betterment Coalition (NCRBC). The EAC began with a few NCRBC members with a special interest in the educational opportunities in our three county (Bureau, LaSalle, and Putnam) area.

A primary initial concern of NCRBC is the “brain drain” in which many of our local youth leave the area. Often this begins with their leaving home to attend college. Often, they then find jobs in other areas with more substantial employment opportunities for college educated people. The NCRBC is dealing with some of the problems related to job opportunities and community enhancements for university and community college graduates.

A primary focus of the EAC is enhancing the learning opportunities for people in our area. We seek to support the continuous improvement of the educational performance for the schools in our area. Data indicate that many of our local schools’ performance are running at the midpoint of the Illinois School system. Illinois schools are lagging behind the performance of a majority of the states in this country. The United States performance has started to lag other industrialized countries in the world. The hope is that improvement in the educational system will stimulate economic development in the future and in turn eventually eliminate the flux of talented young people leaving the area.

The EAC is focusing on enabling broad community input, feedback, and support for our schools. Initial groundwork has focused on a study group for data collection and identification of strengths and weaknesses of our local educational programs. A larger group of additional participants is in the process of becoming involved.

Networking is a prime objective of the EAC. We have several organizations outside of our community with which we communicate. The networking of various community members and local organizations concerned with the educational opportunities for our youth and other citizens in our area is one of our major goals.